The background description provided herein is for the purpose of generally presenting the context of the disclosure. Work of the presently named inventor(s), to the extent the work is described in this background section, as well as aspects of the description that may not otherwise qualify as prior art at the time of filing, are neither expressly nor impliedly admitted as prior art against the present disclosure.
Wireless networks provide a convenient way for devices to communicate. However, as the popularity of wireless connectivity grows, security issues unique to wireless communications are more likely to be exploited. For example, maintaining security in a wireless computing environment is a difficult task because wireless communications are transmitted through unsecured space. Thus, devices within range of the communications may receive and read the communications. Consequently, malicious users may attempt to interfere with devices that are wirelessly communicating by seeking to compromise the integrity, authenticity, and/or confidentiality of the wireless communications.
For example, a malicious wireless device may read wireless communications being transmitted between two other devices to obtain information about the devices, such as a media access control (MAC) address. Subsequently, the malicious wireless device can transmit de-authentication requests or other requests using the MAC address of the other device to cause disruptions in the communications, such as a denial of service (DoS) attack. For example, if a client device is attacked, the intent of the malicious device is to disconnect and/or keep the client device from connecting to a specific access point (AP) thereby preventing connection to a network. If the access point is attacked, the intent of the malicious device is to disconnect and/or keep other devices from connecting to the access point.